What is the purpose of the =+ operator in Java? [duplicate]

Answer 1

This is not a comparison operator, it is simple assignment. You are just adding a sign to your variable. If you added a -, it would negate it.

Answer 2

Also another important aspect of the combined operators like =+ or =- is the fact they add an implicit cast. This is vital when you are doing operations on bytes (for example). \

byte a = 1;
byte b = 2;

a += b; //this is valid add operation

Note: the sum of two bytes is an int value, unless you do a cast.

a =(byte) a + b //but with the compound assignment you dont have to include the cast.